Office Hours and Contact Information
| Instructor | Dr. Diana Ashe |
| Office | Morton 161 |
| Phone | x3332 |
| ashed@uncw.edu |
The Art of Living
Course Concepts
We will spend the semester exploring ancient, modern, and contemporary ideas about what constitutes a successful life. By focusing on each thinker and writer's rhetorical and stylistic approach to conveying ideas about the art of living, we will prepare ourselves for a final unit that focuses on the art of living the life of the writer. In addition to reading and discussing ideas about the art of living from Socrates to Thich Nhat Hanh, each student will read and analyze a single contemporary text on the art of living a successful life.
At the same time that we are developing our own ideas about these concepts, Dr. Tom Schmid's PAR 400 class will be reading many of the same texts from a philosophy perspective. To enrich our semester, our class will interact with Professor Schmid's class in several ways: through our blogs and other written work, and through the collaborative editing and publication process of an Art of Living 2009 chapbook, with the assistance of the Creative Writing Department's Publishing Laboratory.
Course Texts
Plato. Trial and Death of Socrates.
Epictetus. Art of Living.
Machiavelli. The Prince.
Gracian, Balthasar. The Art of Worldly Wisdom.
Montaigne. Essays.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. Peace Is Every Step.
Segal, Jerome. Graceful Simplicity.
Additional materials through electronic reserve and handouts.